Previews

City of Villains

Cryptic Studios' sequel to City of Heroes is almost ready to go, and it's looking really good

Spiffy:

It's City of Heroes with bad guys and better graphics. What's not to like?

Iffy:

Price model is still being discussed and it could prove pricey to current City of Heroes players.

The one thing that was obviously missing in City of Heroes was the player-controlled supervillain. Every comic hero needs his arch nemesis, and NCSoft is about to drop a whole lot of bad guys on the City of Heroes landscape when the company releases City of Villains later this year.

Developer Cryptic Studios had three points that it wanted to focus on during the development of the sequel. First, it wanted the players to feel like they were playing supervillains, rather than playing a superhero with a nastier-looking costume. Second, PvP had to be a very important aspect of the game. Lastly, they wanted to include intricately developed supervillain bases of operation for players to construct.

The character creation is similar to City of Heroes in that you have a huge variety of costumes and designs from which to choose. According to Jack Emmert, the creative director of the game, there is an even bigger number of possible costume combinations in City of Villains.

The storyline starts with you being busted out of prison by evil mastermind Lord Recluse. His plan is to bust out a lot of lower-level villains, like you, and to then take them to a chain of islands which is like a den of thieves, where they'll battle with one another, doing missions and other odd jobs to see which ones rise to the top of the heap. It's a true battle of the fittest. There are four main PvP zones in the game all around the chain of islands (so you won't see big battles in the heart of Paragon City). These zones are where superheroes and supervillains will be able to attack one another during set missions.

One of the fascinating things about the big missions on the islands is that famous heroes from Paragon City will be there to try to stop the villains from accomplishing their objectives. (Even Statesman will be there.) The new missions also have cutscenes that remind you of your goals for that particular scenario.

Bases will be a critical part of City of Villains. Constructing them is as easy and pointing and clicking at the various types of lairs from sewers and caves to secret labs. You can build elaborate mazes or just a small lair. The bases serve a purpose, though. You'll be able to use teleporters and healers while at your base, but the main reason to have one is to store items of power; these extremely powerful items will attract the attention of other supergroups, who can raid the base in search of the item. A base can only be raided once per day, and during a set time, which is set by the leader of the supervillain group.

The game looks a bit better than City of Heroes; power effects are without a doubt improved over the original. Cryptic plans to add these graphic enhancements to City of Heroes at some point, but for now the better visuals will only be in the sequel.
All in all, it looks like a slam-dunk for fans of the original game. The only potential snafu is the price model. Nothing is set in stone, but if you own City of Heroes you won't get to play City of Villains for free. There will most likely be an additional monthly fee. (Just how much that is going to be is not yet known.) You won't need the original game to play City of Villains; it's a standalone game that just happens to blend itself in with the original. Still, it would be nice if NCSoft could come up with a fair way to reward owners of the original game when deciding to purchase the new one.

Pricing aside, City of Villains is looking good, and you should be battling it out against the heroes of Paragon City sometimes this fall.